On Saving Richard Lippold’s Orpheus and Apollo at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
The author pictured underneath Richard Lippold’s sculpture in the Seagram Building
In 1958, when I was a 19-year-old at student at Hunter College, I agreed to assist Richard Lippold in the installation of his sculpture in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons Restaurant in the newly erected Mies van der Rohe/Phillip Johnson Seagram Building. Richard’s works were always bound to their physical space. This building was to be dedicated to the architectural integration and exhibition of bespoke art, the best of its time. Picasso’s “Le Tricorne” (theatrical backdrop for the Ballet Russe) occupied the space between the Grill Room and the Fountain Room, for which Mark Rothko had been commissioned to paint four large paintings. The completion of the numerous art installations kept apace with our installation of Richard’s bronze rod and stainless steel wire sculpture. I was his assistant in most of his New York City commissions. In 1989, the restaurant’s interior was landmarked by the NYC Landmark Commission.
This is quite a different story from the installation of Richard Lippold’s Orpheus and Apollo at Lincoln Center (then Avery Fisher Philharmonic Hall), with which I also assisted. In October 1963, Calvin Tomkins wrote a complete profile on the installation of this work in The New Yorker Magazine as we were installing it. The fraught interior construction of the building, racing for completion deadlines was going on at the same time as we were working 50 feet above to install. The Structural, Bridge and Ornamental Ironworkers Union was pressuring to do the installation and after fierce negotiations, we prevailed and were made honorary members of the Union. I was given a “Brother Marilynn” label for my hardhat. We all made our deadlines by working around the clock.
An installation view of Orpheus and Apollo
When Philharmonic Hall opened, the main lobby was defined by rich satiny Muntz metal (brass alloy) sheets and glistening stainless steel cable. Orpheus and Apollo, were in perfectly balanced symbiotic relationship with the architecture, as wedded as the sculptures of Chartres Cathedral are to that building. The sculpture elevated and fulfilled the interior architecture, it made the space tangible, coherent and vibrant. It enabled singular human engagement with the space. What would the cultural loss be to succeeding generations of Chartres Cathedral without its sculptures? The loss of Orpheus and Apollo would be a comparable cultural loss.
Whether or not the work should be reinstalled is not a question, whether or not it can be reinstalled is the question. Because Lippold’s works are always part of the architecture, supported by it and wholly dependent on it, it, they do not have form without the building.
Right now, this sculpture is just a bunch of metal planes and cables. How has it been stored? Were parts numbered and carefully wrapped? Was a video made while taking it down? As the last-man-standing, who was there and installed the work (Richard died in 2002), I will say that reinstallation depends upon whether or not the work was responsibly disassembled. Was some record made of the process of disassembly? Did the Lincoln Center archive or did the architects retain the blueprints from which we installed? After the model was shown to the architects (Harrison & Abramovitz), it was exhibited at the Willard Gallery for the Lincoln Center Board to view, to unanimous acclamation; Jean Lipman purchased it. If all else fails, locating the model could be a start. Every effort should be made to save this work.
Marilynn Gelfman Karp
3 March 2020
Marilynn Gelfman Karp is Professor Emerita of New York University. She is president of the Anonymous Arts Recovery Society and director of the Anonymous Arts Museum. She has been a long term board member of PLNYS and now serves on the Trustees Council. Her fields of expertise are American material culture, architectural conservation and historic preservation.
She is a fine sculptor, singular cook, loving mother, proud grandmother, careful historian and compulsive collector of extraordinary objects. Her previous books are In Flagrante Collecto (parsing the need to collect and examining the range and breadth of objects of desire) and I Married an Art Dealer: Art, Enlightenment & Death with Ivan Karp (a memoir). Uncorked: a corkscrew collection, Abbeville Press has just been published. She divides her time between New York City and upstate New York.